April 17, 2007

"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible." — Doug Lawson

So there was a change of plans last night, instead of staying in Tangnag for a rest day today as had been planned we continued with our trek and headed to Khare. Our next scheduled rest day will thus be tomorro in Khare which Kaji intends to use to refresh our mountaineering skills. I think Kaji is becoming more confident in my fitness level, when we first started our trek when ever I would ask for an estimate of how long a given leg would be he would over estimate by about 50% and now his estimates are more or less on the money. I'm happy with the change of plans as the only thing we were schedule to do today was visit the glacial lake of Sabai which we did anyway on our trek today. It was a quite impressive scene with Kyshar (sp?), a stunning unclimbed peak providing the back drop for the lakes emerald green water. Perhaps even more incredible is the fact that this is but a shadow of the lake that existed here 10 years ago. During the monsoon the terminal morain which provided the southern bank of the lake burst unleashing what must have been an awe inspiring flashflood that erased Tangnag from the map, luckily it was during the monsoon season when Tangnag is uninhabited as none would have survived.
We arrived in Khare relatively early, ~12, and I felt ok but after lunch I took a nap as I started to develop a bit of a headache, once I woke up a drank some water and tea and felt much better. I even went on a short climb by myself. I am becoming quite miffed with my altimeter, despite unchanging weather and frequent resetting it is always off by a fair margin, and now I can't even set it to the proper altitude, it gets within 300m and reverts to default setting, very frustrating. I'm forced to use it now as only a relative guide. On the otherend of the spectrum I love my hankie, great and highly underrated piece of gear. It functions as a kleenex, washcloth (after proper washing), neck cover for the sun, filter, etc... extremely multifunctional.
It snowed and hailed again today, starting to get cooler as we camp progressively higher. Khare will likely be the last village/tea houses I'll see for at least a week. 1 more day and the game will be a foot!